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Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine.

As the threat of war began to loom in the 1930s, an elaborate system of fortifications sprung up in northeastern France.

Known as the Maginot line, this string of defences was designed to protect

the nation in the event of an invasion by Nazi Germany. So when Hitler's forces did invade,

how much blame should the Maginot Line shoulder for the fall of France in double quick time?

That's a question that's troubled historians ever since the

traumatic events of 1940. Here in conversation with Spencer Mizzin, Kevin Passmore explains

why the line has become a symbol of the nation's collective failure to face the challenges of the

modern world. Kevin, before digging into the controversies of

swirl around the Maginot line since its construction about a century ago, I wonder if you could

give our listeners a quick introduction to the Maginot line. What was it? The first myth that we can bust on the

Maginot Line is that the Maginot Line didn't really cover the whole French frontier. The crucial part

of the Maginot Line, and what people knew as the Maginot Line at the time, was on a certain part of the German border with France.

If you can imagine the French border with Germany as a kind of arrow pointing into Germany,

the Maginot Line was on the kind of top part of that arrow, which is the land border with Germany. Much of it was forested or it had

industries on it. The lower part of the arrow was formed by the Rhine. There there were lighter

fortifications, just machine gun casements, large blockhouses really, covering the major crossing

...